"Well, if he was, he finished himself off by that affair,"
Haythorne grumbled.

"And the woman was a termagant - at least so I've been told. It
was generally accepted in Berkeley that she made life - er - not
exactly paradise for her husband."

"I never heard that," Haythorne rejoined. "In San Francisco the
talk was all the other way."

"Woman sort of a martyr, eh? - crucified on the cross of
matrimony?"

The doctor nodded. Messner's gray eyes were mildly curious as he
went on:

"That was to be expected - two sides to the shield. Living in
Berkeley I only got the one side. She was a great deal in San
Francisco, it seems."

"Some coffee, please," Haythorne said.

The woman refilled his mug, at the same time breaking into light
laughter.

"You're gossiping like a pair of beldames," she chided them.

"It's so interesting," Messner smiled at her, then returned to the
doctor. "The husband seems then to have had a not very savory
reputation in San Francisco?"